A Feast for Odin - Our NUMBER 1 Board Game of ALL TIME

[Music] hi everyone i'm amy and this is my fiance maggie and together we are thinker themer and we review games from two different perspectives on our channel i'm all about the mechanics and maggie is all about the theme or the story of the game and today this we could not be more excited about the topic of this video because we have agonized over creating our top 10 lists and then we thought you know what there is just one game that we both agree on yes and that is our number one game of all time and if you know the channel you'll know that sometimes we have very different tastes yes and so the fact that we both love and adore this game as much as we do yeah is it just shows the power of this game to bring our two different perspectives together it's got it all into one game nailed it yeah so our number one game of all time so far so far but of all time is a feast for odin we love and adore i'm actually feeling like super excited just just i know having a box here and also just talking being able to talk about this because we were working up to talking about this but you know to now say ube rosenberg you have the top spot on both of our lists yes with a feast for odin and so this video is going to be a full review of the base game we'll touch on the expansion later in the video but we're going to talk about um the full game out why we love it so much a little bit of an overview if you haven't played it before yeah um so let's get stuck into that now yeah so in a feast for odin we are playing as vikings trying to create well be the most prosperous viking clan and by the end of the game the way we're going to do this is we're going to be diving into the world of vikings and we're going to be doing well one of the key things is going to be recruiting our vikings as we go in subsequent rounds we have to feed them at the end of every round so we have to be very careful that we're planning accordingly and then we have a whole open world of different things that we can do to make our clan prosperous so that could be things like um harvesting things you could go hunting you could go whaling you could build some ships you could uh build the storage houses where you're gonna keep everything you could go on expeditions you can go and pillaging for which i'm not really a fan of the pillaging concept but it's sort of kind of like what what happened for amazing jewels or you know all sorts of different things and in the process we're going to be able to make sure that we are able to pay all our bills at home and we for some reason we start with a massive massive debt maybe that's like our mortgage are we liking all of our viking mortgages yes but we'll get into in a bit and yeah what i mean by well yeah because interestingly this game is really open world like and in terms of the euro games when you when you look at this all the things that come coming up in this box and the amount of space that it takes up on the table yeah it can be quite overwhelming to um get into this game but the thing that really ties it all together is the individual player boards that you start with and the puzzle that is located on that board because as maggie said the main thing about this is that you really need to be able to get yourself back to a point where you're on zero point so you start in the negative and that all is shown on this polyamino tile puzzle space on your player board where you'll see there's a huge amount of negative victory points depicted on here and you need to cover that puzzle with polyamino tiles in order to be able to well not just reach neutrality but then of course try and get as high of a score as possible now the way that you're going to be doing that is through worker placement one of our favorite mechanics yeah and that all takes place on this uh central board uh where you are going to be doing all of these activities that maggie mentioned again when you first start this game it looks really overwhelming because there are so many places where you can place your viking meeples and at the beginning of the game you only have five workers that's going to increase as the rounds go on but you've got limited amount of workers and many many many things that you can get done but the beautiful thing about this game is that everything you need to get done makes what makes a lot of thematic sense absolutely so if you are going to build boats so that you can go off and explore and go to faraway lands and uh pillage and do all of these actions to get polyamino tiles um you are going to need wood because what is the resource that's going to help you build boats likewise if you want to build additional buildings to store additional polyamino tiles you're going to need wood and stone so then you've got to go to the mountains and try and achieve and try and take some of these resources that are on offer so everything makes sense in terms of thinking about what you ultimately want to achieve and then working back from that in terms of the worker placement steps if you like that you want to take along the way so the way that you're going to get all of these beautiful polyamino tiles that are eventually going to go on your board and cover up those negative victory points is to go out and do what vikings do best you can craft items you can invest in livestock that are going to eventually get pregnant and have more livestock available to you so you can leverage the resources that naturally come from owning livestock or you can try your luck at a bit of hunting and that's a really interesting part of the game and the only part of the game that really introduces a luck element because in this game you will have weapons available to you in the form of these weapon cards and the more weapon cards that you collect the more likely it is that you're hunting or you're laying a snare or your whaling activities are going to be successful because when you take these worker placement actions you're going to be rolling one of these die when you roll the die you're effectively looking for a low number because then you're going to use your weapons in combination with wood to try and get that number down to zero and then collect all of the spoils of that hunting trip in the form of these polyamino tiles that are again going to help you with your puzzle as you get more confident as the game progresses you also are going to have boats that are going to enable you to go out and explore and if you're feeling super confident about your game you can explore one of these additional island boards that adds an additional place for you to place polyamino tiles um but also they come along with more negative victory points that you need to cover up more debt more debt more islands more debt more more islands more problems yeah yeah if you want more there's more problems but also more opportunity you know it's that sort of risk reward because a lot of those islands yeah you're going to get other goodies as well yeah that's right and all that one other thing you can do when you go out on your boats as maggie mentioned is you can find all these treasures which offer you some incredibly large polyamino tiles that are going to cover up more of those negative points but as maggie mentioned the player board and the additional islands and all the other places where you can place polyamino tiles in this game also afford you some really great benefits such as ongoing income so the first thing is the puzzle is constrained in a way that makes you place the polymer tiles in such a way that allows you to collect the income that is on the diagonal of your player board i won't go into how that works here but essentially the more you can cover up the more money you'll be collecting every round also there are some items available on your player board and if you surround that perfectly with polyamino tires without covering them up you're also going to get those beneficial tiles and resources every round of the game and if that wasn't enough there are two elements of the mechanics that really really puts the pressure on players one is that at the end of every round you're going to have to feed all of your vikings that you have and you're going to have to use the food tiles or the red and orange colored tiles and sometimes just some coin to pay off some people who you're not feeding yeah to fill this space here depending on how many vikings have been revealed i.e the round of the game the other thing that really puts the pressure on in this game is the placement rules for tiles because they're all different colors as you can see they start off orange which is like the lowest level of polyamino tile all the way through to the blue which is the most valuable and you can actually upgrade your polyamino tiles along the way so on the back of orange polyamino tiles is red and then from red if i was to upgrade this i would need to get the same shape in green and then from green you would upgrade it to blue and blue allows you the most versatility in terms of where you can place it because greens can't be against other greens reds and yellows can't even go onto your player board and so you are looking to not only collect polyamino tiles but to upgrade them as well using actions on the board so unlike other reviews you already know that this is our number one game of all time we love this game love love love so we're just gonna focus on some things that we love about this game for this review well i think to begin with this was the first well viticulture was my gateway into what a thematic euro could be this makes me feel like i am a grown up and i am given responsibilities but i'm also given the freedom to go about meeting my responsibilities whichever way i want so the the ability to to be able to choose what my strategy is going to be and that makes sense so you know am i going to go animal heavy and you know want to go hunting am i going to be more of a stay at home i won't actually even get any any ships i won't go exploring i'm just going to try and maximize and craft things locally or go no stuff all this uh local stuff i'm just going to go crazy with my explorations i'm going to build all these ships the other thing that we didn't talk about was emigrations so you can also emigrate your uh send off your vikings to to other lands and they don't really come back they're gonna go and create new settlements and that's also gonna give you a lot of points and it also means that because they're going on less mouth to feet exactly you don't have to feed them so that can be another another great thing i i just love that there's just so many choices which can lead to a little bit of an analysis paralysis but i feel like that's the the best kind of analysis paralysis for me because i just get this huge sense of creation not only from the things that i get to choose to like how i'm going to evolve my strategy but also the puzzle itself going okay what kind of piece am i going to need what color does it need to be how are they going to sit together and then all of a sudden inevitably what starts to happen is towards the end of the game you you are shown or daunted with this this idea of i still have a lot of negatives in there how's this ever going to come together let alone how am i going to be able to like attack tackle some of those islands but that is the thing i love about this game because every time you start this game you're like there is no way i like i'm starting to learn now that yes there is a way but when you start playing this game for the first time you're like how i can't even cover my victory points on my playboard how am i going to get an island and cover up more negative victory points like there is just because you start with so few workers the beginning of the game you're so like there's not a lot you can get done and so it feels like getting every polyamino tile is just this excruciating well okay now i've got a tiny four like four squares and nutritionally red or originally uh orange yeah how am i gonna get that even to a color that i'm gonna be able to place on my board and it feels so overwhelming to start on a negative um but then what you realize as you get into those like the second half of the game and now you've got a lot of vikings at your disposal and every time i get to that point in the game i'm like whoa i've got so many vikings to put out onto the worker placement spots and then you start creating this engine of sorts of collecting so many polyamino tiles that by the end of the game you're like i've got too many polyamino tiles and nowhere to put them and that is so clever because you end up like with this abundance of things because you've got this thriving viking community and then you all the regret is really i should have i should have built more storehouses i should have more storehouses i should have gone on expeditions to get other islands because now i've got all this stuff that's not going to earn me victory points at the end of the game yeah and that so that's a weight that was a waste of my time i feel like the other thing is that you never feel like every turn that you get you never feel like every round i should say like i could i was able to do enough it's like because the more powerful the action is the more uh meeple vikings you have to play so sometimes if you get very greedy in terms of getting oh i'm going to maximize and get all of these super powerful actions you're having to put four meeples at a time that's extremely expensive and that might mean that you only get you know one like a couple of girls and that's it having said that and there's something you've said to me like it doesn't really matter it's like you always there's this combination of you always feel like you're not you're doing a sub optimal action but at the same time you also are getting progress along the way yeah no matter what you do yeah it's it's positive you're going to get something which is like really nice aside even if you fail at the dice roll you get to get resources in weapons and wood sometimes you even get consolation prices yeah sometimes you even get to take a meeple back for the from the placement spot and so that no matter what you do you're going to get something good and i really love that about this game that fact that you know it even if you're making slow progress you're always making sure you're learning from those mistakes it's like we went out there we tried to do our hunting we failed but at least we came back with more wood and more skills yeah yeah exactly we kind of leveled up our skill that's the other thing like it's it's interesting having this the with the dice rolling the when you're hunting obviously you're wanting that sort of representing the danger or the level of difficulty of of overcoming that thing that you're hunting that animal so you want to have a low number but when you're going in an exploration of pillaging action or plundering you actually when you're rolling that you actually want a high number because that's almost like you know the the power that you're able to kind of bring value yeah yeah so you're trying to add resources sometimes in the form of stone sometimes in the form of additional weapons to try and be as powerful as you can be when you're out there pillaging or uh what are some raiding um and i want to actually talk about that because that is one of my favorite elements of this game is this board here with all of the goodies um in terms of uh treasures that you're picking up or forging along the way um as your viking clan and you can choose here your own polyamino tile shape so whereas the other shapes are very much dictated by the actions that you're doing on the board specific actions give you specific resources these polyamino tiles is like shopping because this really is like shopping so you know that you've got a certain amount to spend whether that's in coins um because sometimes you can actually buy these or power in terms of the sword value on these items and then you just are trying to find the best way or the best use of your money and skills to get the best tile that's going to suit your specific puzzle and i love that it does slow down the game a little bit usually yeah when i'm shocked amy shopping oh and i only knew that i could get this shape oh but maybe this shape would be better but i just i love this element because it gives you even more choice within this sandbox game i also love that if you don't want to go raiding or pillaging or plundering you can just craft those at home so there are ways of using ore to craft them if you're deciding that you know you want to stay live a peaceful life yeah live a more peaceful more you know um farmer type life and that is the beauty of this scape that everybody can be pursuing a different strategy you might be out exploring as many islands as possible somebody else is just collecting things and raiding and pillaging and someone else might just be hanging out at home breeding sheep or like me you know i love learning so you might just be going very uh upskilling yourself having all these occupations because that's one of the other things that you can do like you can be gaining occupation cards along the way and they'll give you if you play them you know they'll they'll give you additional um either advantages or some of them they you know most of them will also have victory points along the way so yeah so you can just be upskilling him at home yeah yeah we rarely do that as a strategy but it's it's a very ube thing to do like that card play optimizing the card play and optimizing the professions and i think that that that has been one of the criticisms of the base game is the professions or occupations and the luck that is that's another point of luck in this game in that if you pick a card that happens to work in in combination with your strategy that you're pursuing um and this is kind of something that we said about hella tell as well then it's a really powerful combo but you can also go a whole game where you're only drawing occupations that don't really help your game um and that you know that is somewhat fixed with the expansion which we'll talk about um but yeah i i tend to not lean too heavily into the occupation strategy as you mentioned just because sometimes i feel like drawing one card at a time is not particularly useful yeah i um but i do love that everyone around the table can be pursuing a different strategy and it's so well balanced that it's still you're still not sure who's gonna win the game yeah and i love that and it's all about taking risks at the right time to build out your boards i have to say as a themer as well you know some people are like this is not thematic this is incredibly thematic at least for me one obviously all the color on the board i love it everything that you do makes thematic sense yes there's not a big narrative story driven kind of campaign thing although there are some fan-made campaigns which is really really cool um but but everything that you're doing makes sense and everything you know as you're upgrading things as you're even this concept and this is possibly going to be a little bit of a stretch but even this concept of when you're putting multiple uh workers down you're getting to kind of pick up the option of one of those professions and then if you're putting even more it's kind of like you're you're upskilling by all working together you're learning from one another skills and you're like and that's not really explicitly said in the thematic but yeah thematic reach but it does have a fool what is it that they call it an almanac of the game where it actually has thematically it goes into full detail of all of the different um items and components and what was their significance in their role in viking life i loved that and that was the first time i'd ever seen that in a ball game was when we bought this board game and it's like this whole book just about viking culture yeah and and the ties to why things are the way they are in the game really they refer to this as a saga of a euro game and i would have to completely agree every time i go into this game and if you saw the the top 10 solo list that um that i did with with rado this is my number one solo as well every time i go into this game i feel like i'm going into a saga and i genuinely don't necessarily know how it's going to unfold or what i'm going to do but there's so many options in terms of how this story can can unfold i also learned that saga is the i believe is the the name of the the goddess of poetry and mythology so it's like i didn't i didn't know that and that vikings again so so the term viking is actually more referring to the action of the exploration the raiding and the you know that sort of side of things whereas now we refer to vikings as the the the group of people but that that's actually not really correct obviously it's something that's now part of interesting yeah so there's so much to learn thematically just from the book exactly in yeah and in terms of like would this game be a game for you i think if you like work a placement this is one of the finest examples of worker placement the fact that you do need to scale up your number of workers that you're using to get better actions done is really clever but also of course there's only one of generally speaking one of every type of action which means that there is in a multiplayer game a bit of competition for those spaces and you really need to think about what you want to get done first as opposed to in subsequent you know leaving it open for other people to take those spots and of course if you like the idea of the central polyamino tile tetris puzzle that is such that for me is what holds this game together for me everything that you do is about this puzzle and the puzzle that you choose to build out in scope the one thing that people i anticipate will say about this game and the fact that it is my number one game is i'm not a huge fan of multiplayer solitaire and this game is certainly a game that has low interaction aside from the fact that you'll be competing for these worker placement spots and i've thought long and hard about why this is but i just genuinely enjoy this puzzle the puzzle is complex super complex and it's enough to keep me really focused to the point where it doesn't really matter what everyone else is doing with their puzzle because i'm just enjoying the challenge of trying to make this work and thinking about what i need to do next to build out this puzzle so for me it is an exception to my rule about multiplayer solitaire i just i just i love it i love the puzzle also all of the pieces are unique so all of the the jewelry pieces for example so that is competition potentially yeah yeah and same with the obviously the worker placement spots sometimes and that's the thing how dare you on a in a two-player game when it's just you know you and some other person and you're both pursuing different strategies the interaction is very low yeah but once you get to a three or four player game and you've got someone that's got the exact same plans as you that's when it gets actually really complicated to the point where it's like maybe i should just change my strategy because we are competing over all of the same spots and all of the same things um so i just i just find it really fascinating this game because there's so many different ways to get to the winning position yeah i'll talk a little bit about the solo mode as well because this is my absolute number one favorite solo game and the reason for that is because this game is so as a solo mode it's so pure in the way that you get to play it all that happens is you're actually playing with two different color meeples and so every round you're going to be places on one round on my place the yellow for example and then in the next round those yellow meeples that were placed stay on the board and they're blocking the next round when i'm placing for example the black meeples on the board so you're always going to be blocking yourself from the the actions that you took the the the round before what that means is the game in and of it's there's no ai there's no like oh then if this happens then you do this like it's just so simple you're just getting to play the game and you actually do get to learn not only learn how the game plays but also learn and explore all those different strategies in the most streamlined of ways so that for that reason that's it that's all it is with it with the solo game and i did find this is you know one of the my anecdotes is that one time i played this for like seven hours straight and i didn't even realize because again it usually takes you know about two between two to three hours to play a game or even longer if you have you know a group with a lot of ap it took me seven hours and that time went by like that i didn't realize it was a draft um where i was sitting and i actually you guys said i got sick yeah i'm just like sitting in there focused on facebook and i was like i didn't even yeah i didn't even care and it did improve my game because it did mean that i got to learn how the islands work and the timing of those things yeah i think also just to pick up on that it is a long game but because it's so set in the the way around works you follow this board and you go through each of the stages in turn which makes it super clear and everybody knows what's happening yeah um you the time just flies by and every time you're like oh i've only got five meeples this round and so every round feels excruciating and so it just the time really honestly flies by this is one of those games where we look up and we're like oh my goodness is that the time yeah and like yeah we'll be like oh well it's 1am or whatever it is but this game is one of those games that just makes time disappear yeah the other thing is obviously you need a lot of table space for this game yes what you see here is just a simple printed 3d printed insert that we have that obviously makes it so much easier for maggie to get everything out to play a solo game and to set up when we want to share this game with friends so we'd highly recommend getting an insert for this game now let's talk about the expansion the norwegians in my humble opinion it is one of those expansions in our collection that we would say is you know essential yes essential in that it's once it's integrated into the game you can barely remember what the game was like without it it introduces a whole new player board which helps tighten up the game at different play accounts there's a few additional you know animals different actions that you can get done and basically it helps to further fine-tune the balance of some of the elements in the game um and but i was i would say though when you're starting with this game get the base game yeah just get the base game yeah you won't even notice any of the things that are brought in by the norwegians until you're really familiar with the base game so if you're only going to be playing it at two players the norwegians is probably um you know an essential way to tighten up the game board but everything else is really just extra or fine-tuning yeah what is already a really excellent game an excellent game so i would get the base game play it explore it so much game to be had and then pick up the norwegians is similar to you know with viticulture get to know the game then get tuscany um and it gives you the newly born really opens up and there's so much more exactly and maybe we'll do a full review of the norwegians at some point but uh it gets a huge tick from us and we've integrated everything such that we actually had to pull it all apart just to do this review um what was one of them yeah what was part of the base game um but obviously this is our number one game of all time we would always sit down we'd love to see unicorn and teach this to you because this game is just such an a shining example of what a big game experience can be some bodies everything a perfect dry euro which is not even that dry like it's actually really beautifully rich for me euro can be yes and if you've been too scared to play this game give it a go it's it looks really overwhelming but when you break it down each of the actions is really just a different way to collect these polyamino tiles and the puzzle if you like puzzles you need to have this game in your collection absolutely so we hope you've enjoyed this review if you did please like and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already we love big box euros but we also love small box games and kickstarters and we talk about all of those things on our channel but otherwise hoping you have a wonderful end to the year in 2021 and we'll be back with more board game reviews soon but bye for now bye [Music]

Channel: ThinkerThemer

Views: 22,526

Keywords: board games, board game reviews, board game mechanics, tabletop games, tabletop game reviews, board game themes, thinker themer, thinkerthemer, top 10, boardgames, boardgame, top 10 boardgames, number 1 board game, number 1 board game of all time, review, reviews, a feast for odin board game, a feast for odin review, a feast for odin, a feast for odin game

Id: WMFqc_j8xUA

Length: 28min 37sec (1717 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 22 2021